I think one of the key factors might be a real lack of experience and history that some people in these areas enjoy when it comes to developing for the Internet when compared to those in the more developed industries in the US and in Europe.  After all, the Internet was very much born in ‘the west’ and it’s adoption driven by those living in those areas and lucky enough to be able to afford PC’s at home or those working in tech-led office environments.  

Indeed, I had a PC in my bedroom in the late eighties dialing up on my 14.4 modem, enjoying the early websites and Bulletin Boards and using software to access batch processing on the mainframe at work.  Ever since those days I’ve been ahead of the curve in terms of technology and hardware adoption  – a trait that continues to this day with my recently paying over the odds to get myself on an iPad before they were generally available.

And you know what?  That’s a big problem.  I’ve grown up (and continue to grow) with the Internet.  And with that comes a legacy of expectation – a legacy that, if we are not careful, burdens us with orthodoxies and then contrives to squeeze our minds into narrowly focused realms of how things should be done and what’s possible.

I was talking with people the other day about the day in January which marked 100 years since the invention of the aircraft carrier – 100 years since a plane first landed on a ship.  This was indeed a landmark in innovation – a huge step in imagination and courage to first combine these two, at the time, separate pursuits.  However, give a young child who’s no concept of aircraft carriers a model boat and a model plane and he or she will have that bad boy plane landing on the deck of that boat in no time at all.  No one has told that child you can’t do that.

And, in growing up with the Internet, I have grown within certain expectations created by myself and those around me about what’s possible. 

Specifically, for example I come burdened with the notion and corresponding phrase of ‘going online’.  Anyone of my age who has used modems knows that ‘going online’ is something you had to do – something to go through – and it was neither easy nor a fast process.  Talk to some 12 year olds now with wireless at home and 3G on their Smartphone and they won’t know what you’re talking about.

For millions of people in developing countries the idea that the Internet is something that comes on a computer screen is also a strange notion.  Only the other day I was enjoying the Kayak iPhone application whilst moaning at the (developed for the big screen) web pages I had to suffer in booking a hotel or a flight. 

Smart mobile-based applications developed for Africa, say in the area of micro financing, don’t reference traditional web pages.  There simply is no legacy – legacy that exists at two levels – one at the level of the historical architecture of what more developed countries have built in terms of existing pages and also no legacy in the minds of some of us in terms of what we expect to see – what we have been conditioned to see and expect.

It is therefore no surprise that those people not burdened by these legacies are able to see more clearly about what actually might be useful – what might be possible with what enablers we have today.  They don’t think about what they had yesterday or last year because, for many of them when it comes to the Internet, they didn’t have anything then.

As we move forward coming to terms with what might be possible with social media particularly as it pertains to the mobile platform, we might be better off forgetting a lot of what we know. 

Shaking off our experiences and corresponding orthodoxies about how things have been done might go some way to help us imagining what could be done.